The New Year's Light 3 



blind, the increasing light of spring falls tempered 

 on the fields. 



This austere and empty lightening of February 

 skies stands in sharpest contrast to the luxury of 

 gathering darkness which drew us to the home 

 fires in October, and filled the earth with fiery tints 

 of decay and the turbulent autumn sunsets. Then 

 the gloom seemed almost tangible, drooping in 

 umber and sooty brown from the Atlantic rain- 

 clouds over the lanes lined with yellow maples and 

 crowned and carpeted with the elm-leaves turned 

 to soot and gold. The sun sank in a gap between 

 the cumulus clouds with the colours of a furnace 

 mouth in the dark. In February the fierce colour 

 has vanished from the boughs and the sky, and with 

 it the heavy darkness. The tree-tops have the soft 

 differences of purple and brown and grey that reveal 

 the imminence of spring. When the sunsets appear 

 as more than a fugitive streak of dun, they break 

 into rose and green and orange that are very unlike 

 the congested splendours of October, and recall the 

 clear complementary tints that lurk at sunrise among 

 the ripples of an Alpine snow-field. Day, rather 

 than night, seems to prevail even in the coming of 

 darkness. Night deepens out of a gathering grey- 

 ness that keeps to the last some trace of the whiter 

 spring light. In autumn and earlier winter the 

 afternoon daylight was itself so soft and dusky that 

 the night forestalled the actual time of sunset. Now 

 the assurance of victory is with the light ; and 

 while spring seems yet far distant, we enjoy the 

 faint but certain signs of its approach. 



